It's just now the New Year, the fireworks outside confirm it. I'm at home, alone, the headphones blasting Cut Copy so that I don't have to hear the celebrations I wanted to escape but didn't.

But I can still watch the fireworks.

And I can still text a dozen people at once and delight as the phone bursts to life as each returns the cheer.

That's the way I like it. Far, and near. Single, and all at once.

I'm drinking a yamahai junmai sake the name of which I can't remember. Does it matter that I don't know?

These last two weeks of the year have become a traditional period of returning. I've come to guard it, to resist social and work obligation to fulfill this yearned-for task.

Do you know what I have done tonight? I have organized the desktop of my five-year-old computer. I have organized all of the photos on said machine. And I have offloaded the camera of two years of photos, filing them neatly by year and event. It has been most satisfying.

I have only been able to achieve this because I have hardly worked in the past two weeks. I have phoned in about 4 hours a day and rejected the rest, venturing outdoors into the urban windrows.

I have been busy. I've walked all over this city, met with friends, visited family. I've cooked and cleaned and wrapped presents. The difference is that, working only about half the time I usually do, my mind has the space to entertain its whimsies and I have the energy to tend to things I want to pursue for myself.

The variable has been isolated. We know the etiology. Now, how about that cure?

I am the crazy person you don't know who is hopeful that the economic slowdown will mean personal recovery. Bring it on!

The reply texts are still coming. HNY2U2!

Last night I talked myself out of fleeing to the wilderness, instead establishing a contract whereby I would block out the city with headphones and have full access to any and every thing I might want to do that I have been wanting to do for years and have not had the energy to do. Organizing the desktop is a big one. ... You know how good it feels.

If all goes well, we will have an avalanche of updates to this site in the next 24 hours. Woohoo!

Now that we've cleansed the mind of fabricated stress, we approach the concept of a Resolution. Do we still believe in those? Are they just a marketing strategy? Could I design a product that preyed on hopeless hopes? (Credit as manifest destiny—A floating world of easy living for the pious conveyors of liberty.)

Here is what I resolve:

Brew my tea at the right temperature, let it steep long enough.

And always, Himneseyo.